Gabi’s final days

July 23rd, 2010

It's true. My advisor is leaving me to the domestic beasts of the barnyard (my lab). Joking aside, these next three weeks I'm on my own to finish up the final 2D tomographic inversions, GMT plots and my abstract and poster. So much to do in so little time. This past week has been chaotic, filled with crash courses on GMT, inversions and such. Here's a glimpse of my journal (w/o figures because I can't figure out how to upload eps files):

Through comparing the averaged dispersion curves of both Rayleigh and Love waves I attempted to distinguish areas of radial anisotropy. As evident through Figure 20, the region between stations 84-85 (BIG2 and KIP) exhibits high phase velocities for Love waves and relatively low phase velocities for Rayleigh waves (in comparison to the predictions of age-dependent lithosphere). This relationship is indicative of horizontal mantle flow: VSH>VSV. Station path PL85-PL86 (KIP-POHA) indicates the same relationship with high Love wave phase velocities and relatively low Rayleigh wave phase velocities. Other explanations for these velocity perturbations include a change in water column depth and/or crustal thickness. Both of these possibilities were explored through forward modeling in section 3A and 3B, respectively. Forward modeling indicates that changing the water column depth does not affect Love waves and only affects Rayleigh waves at short periods. Variations in crustal thickness cause minimal perturbations for both Love and Rayleigh waves and again only affect the Rayleigh dispersion curves at short periods. As such, the observed dispersion curves in Figures 20 and 21 cannot be explained solely through variations in water column depth or crustal thickness and must be interpreted as the result of shear wave velocity perturbations. In addition, the magnitude of the offset for each dispersion curve at ALL periods suggests that the velocity anomaly must be in the lithosphere and perhaps extends into the asthenosphere. This is particularly evident for both Rayleigh dispersion curves (when compared to forward models in section 3C).

This would make a lot more sense with pictures. I'd really like to upload my GMT stations plot as well. Nothing seems to be working...